Summer Daze
by Rachel Lynn
Summary: The summer after 01, Taichi goes off to soccer camp. WAFFy Daichi frienshippy-type fic of how the two first met. ^-^


Digimon sure as heck ain't mine

Digimon sure as heck ain't mine...although it would be fun if it were....

  
First off, I messed with the canon ages. (I almost never follow canon ages anyway, now that I think about it...O.o) Daisuke's seven, Taichi's twelve, and this takes place the summer after 01. Secondly, this gets pretty WAFFy, so you've been warned. ^-^

  
I also want to dedicate this to the people on the Jyouriplus ML, because they are the people that I look up to, and even though I've only known them for a couple of months, I've learned a _lot_ from them. And thanks to Starsnake-san for beta reading parts of this for me (I wouldn't have finished it if it weren't for your comments)! ^-^ 

  
  


*****

  
  


**Summer Daze**

  
  


"BONZAI!!"

  
Looking up from the table where his parents were diligently checking him in for soccer camp, Yagami Taichi was amazed to see what appeared to be a shirtless kid with war paint and a scarf tied around his waist streaking across the common grounds right in front of the main cafeteria. Obviously, if one was going to go to war at a soccer camp, underwear was not a necessity, Taichi noted as the wind picked up. 

  
Of course, Taichi wasn't the only one to notice the battle cry, so the streaker had quite the audience as all the assorted parents and other campers turned to get a look at the disturbance. 

  
"What the..." Taichi's father choked down laughter beside him as other parents around them clucked back and forth between criticism and amusement. 

  
"MOTOMIYA DAISUKE! When I get my hands on you!" Taichi burst into laughter as the camp's owner rounded the corner, panting hard as she made motions to chase after the shirtless kid who had long since disappeared somewhere into the wooded lot just behind the common grounds. Yeah, camp was going to be great this summer. He could tell already. 

  
And after last summer...Well, as great as last summer had been, Taichi was looking forward to just having a normal, calm, non-dimension traveling stay at camp.

  
"You think that kid's funny, huh?" Taichi turned at the sound of the camp counselor that was helping him and his parents get him checked in. There was something about the smirk on the older teen's face that was a bit discomfiting and Taichi frowned as he hesitantly nodded at the older boy. "Great, 'cause he's staying in your cabin this summer."

  
*****

  
A whole summer spent with his crummy aunt at crummy soccer camp with a bunch of crummy other kids, Daisuke fumed silently as he kept his hidden vigil under the bunk bed in the farthest corner of the cabin his aunt had assigned him to. He didn't get to even stay in the house with her! It wasn't fair! 

  
Okay, okay, so maybe he shouldn't have microwaved his aluminum foil ball last Thanksgiving in her microwave. But c'mon! It had just been so much fun to see the lightening arc inside the machine. How was he supposed to know that it would blow the microwave up after repeated lightening sessions? He was _only_ seven for Pete's sake! And it still hadn't merited his expulsion from the nice house to the middle of the wilderness. He couldn't even play any of the video games he'd brought with him in here. There weren't any plug-ins, let alone a TV!

  
There was a rustling towards the front of the cabin and Daisuke held his breath as he heard the squeaky hinges on the door protest as someone opened it. He tensed slightly as there was a stampeding of feet and voices as a bunch of _older_ kids made their way into the room and started claiming beds. 

  
Resentment welled up in his chest as he watched their feet shuffle around. They, of course, couldn't see him, he had the _perfect_ hiding place after all. But it just wasn't fair! They were going to take his favorite bed in the cabin and they were going to be mean and it was just going to suck hard! Grumbling silently under his breath, Daisuke scowled. How come he had to come here for the summer while buttmunch Jun got to spend the _whole_ summer living with her best friend? Even going to South America with his cheesy professor parents would have been more fun than this! At least he would have gotten to see the jungle and monkeys and snakes and...He'd been_ royally_ shafted, he decided as a pair of feet stopped right in front of _his_ bed.

  
Listening hard, he heard the tell-tale thump of a bag landing in the general vicinity of _his_ bed. That was the absolute last straw. Daisuke flung himself forward with another battle yell, attacking the pair of feet that were right in front of him. 

  
The yell died on his lips though as the older kid he'd attacked didn't make a move. Everyone else in the cabin had jumped, much to Daisuke satisfaction and they were now yelling angrily and trying to catch their breath or doing other dumb things that older kids always did when he scared the crap out of them. But not the kid he'd attacked. 

  
Nope, the older brown haired boy merely looked down at him and smirked slightly. 

  
"Motomiya Daisuke, right?"

  
***** 

  
Heaving his backpack up on his shoulder, Taichi hugged his parents goodbye for the summer, and then made his way toward the cabin he'd been assigned to with some of the other kids. They all seemed like a relatively cool bunch. It was just that he felt kind of disappointed that everyone here liked soccer and wanted to be outside all the time like him. 

  
Which was weird, last summer he would have killed to be surrounded by a bunch of other kids who liked the same things he liked. But the truth was that now, well, he really kinda missed the way Koushiro would space out while typing on his laptop, or the way Jyou would complain about the weather. Heck, he even missed how Mimi used to accost them all and threaten to paint their nails. 

  
Sighing, he let the rest of the kids shuffle into the cabin first. Really, it wasn't like him to be this melancholy. It was just that, well, after a summer like last summer...Camp this year was in real danger of becoming _incredibly_ boring. Not that he really wanted to have to save the world again or anything-once was plenty--but it would have been cool to go to camp with the rest of the Chosen. 

  
The cabin itself was not very impressive at all. It probably didn't even have electricity, Taichi thought, stifling another sigh. It was a good thing he'd brought some of his manga collection instead of his socks. 

  
Chucking his shoes off at the door with everyone else's shoes, Taichi noticed that off to the corner, were a pair of much smaller shoes. They were about the same size as the shoes Hikari wore, except they weren't that god awful shade of pink that Hikari and Mimi seemed to adore so much. 

  
Walking in, he saw that almost all the beds had been claimed except for the bunk in the corner of the room, which suited him just fine. He liked kind of being boxed in. Shuffling over, he stopped in front of the bunk, deciding that he'd probably take the top. Sleeping on the bottom always made him worry that the top bunk would come crashing down at night, crushing him. The thought made him smile, because he remembered confessing that fear late one night in the digiworld to the rest of the Chosen. Jyou was the only one who'd sympathized. 

  
It just figured. 

  
Taichi swung his bag off his shoulder and it landed with a thud on the top bed. Seconds later, there was a nice blood-curdling scream, and Tai felt something attach itself to his leg. He knew immediately what it was, of course. What a lame attempt. He'd been _much_ better at scaring people when he'd been that age. That and a little kid just was _not_ scary after having to fight face to face with Kuwagumon and Devimon and Vamdemon and all the other assorted villains from the previous summer. 

  
Looking down at the burgundy haired boy, he was hard pressed not to laugh actually, as the rest of the cabin erupted in fits of angry startlement. The little boy looked like he was probably the same age as Hikari and Takeru, give or take a year. 

  
He was still shirtless, and even though some of the paint was now smudged and dirty, Taichi could still make out what the boy had done to himself. Under his eyes were two bright flaming red streaks that Taichi assumed had probably come from a tube of lipstick. There was an assortment of other lipstick-like streaks in different colors to go along with those that lined his cheeks and his forehead. 

  
On his chest, the kid had taken what Taichi guessed to be one of the numerous pencil-like things that Mimi had always insisted were essential to make-up, and had drawn a huge dragon that ran from collar bone to bellybutton. The kid must've used a full length mirror to get it to come out like that, he mused. Of course, as a finishing touch, the dragon was fire breathing red lipstick all over the kid's right arm, which was now turning Taichi's one and only pair of socks a nice semi-red color. 

  
"Motomiya Daisuke, right?"

  
The kid blinked up at him, and then scowled as he scrambled to his feet, leaving a nice red streak up Taichi's leg in the process. At least it hadn't been bright pink, was all Taichi could think as he bit back a grimace. 

  
"The bottom bed is_ mine_ and you can't sleep there." Daisuke told him imperiously as he tugged at the bright blue scarf to keep it from falling off altogether. 

  
"Fine with me."

  
*****

  
Trying to be as quiet as possible, Daisuke snuck through the underbrush as he tried to get a better look at all the older kids playing soccer. It wasn't that he wanted to play or anything, he tried to reassure himself. The older kids were dumb anyway, and really, who wanted to kick around some stupid ball for a bazillion hours? How much fun could that possibly be? 

  
Or at least that's what he kept telling himself. 

  
Besides, who wanted to play with a bunch of guys who said he was a baby and too young to keep up? Like they were so hot themselves, he scoffed silently as he inched his belly along the ground to get a better view. Well, maybe there was just one tiny exception to the rule. 

  
Taichi-san seemed to be _really_ good at soccer. While all the other boys were running around like Jun's dumb clueless hamster, Taichi-san always seemed to know what he was doing. 

  
Well, that and Taichi-san had stood up for him when all the other crappy kids had called him a baby. He hadn't even gotten mad about Daisuke turning his socks red with his aunt's lipstick. How cool was that?! 

  
Taking the risk and slowly crawling up onto his knees, Daisuke hid in the bushes and tried for a minute to pick out Taichi-san among all the uniform wearing kids. Everyone was in a blechy army green color. It reminded Daisuke of the toy soldiers he'd had that he'd 'accidentally' melted in his mother's toaster oven. 

  
But there was Taichi-san, just a little bit from mid-field. Daisuke could pick him out easily 'cause the brown-haired boy's goggles reflected in the sunlight. The older boy had control of the ball, and he was kicking it in Daisuke's general direction since the bushes the younger boy was hiding in were beside the goal. 

  
Daisuke fidgeted in suppressed excitement as Taichi-san got closer and closer and closer...Until finally he was ready to take a shot, he drew back to kick and as he went to make the shot...

  
One of the other _dumb _older kids slid right in front of Taichi-san kicking the ball away while at the same time colliding hard with the be-goggled brown haired boy. That...that _couldn't_ have been fair! Daisuke jumped up yelling with as much outrage as his seven-year-old lungs could manage, and with an air of righteous authority he ran out onto the field to tackle the cheater. 

  
*****

  
Taichi managed a bleary blink as he tried to get the world to quit spinning. He hadn't seen Shuuji-kun coming at him until after the other boy and kicked the ball away and inadvertently plowed into him with the extra momentum. 

  
As he sat up though, the weirdest sight greeted Taichi's beleaguered eyes. Half the team was yelling, the other half was cheering. And sitting on top of Shuuji-kun, shoe in hand, was a very pissed looking Daisuke. 

  
"Cheater! Cheatercheatercheater!" The burgundy haired boy was screeching as he bounced his shoe off of Shuuji-kun's shoulder a couple of times. 

  
What the heck? Taichi scrambled to his feet and in one fluid motion yanked the younger boy off of Shuuji-kun who looked more startled and bewildered than anything else. 

  
"What're you doing?" Taichi asked incredulously as he looked down at the furiously panting little boy. 

  
"He cheated! I saw the whole thing! He ran right into you!" Daisuke accused hotly as he gave Shuuji-kun a glare for good measure. Taichi struggled not to laugh at the indignant look on the younger boy's face. 

  
"Daisuke," Taichi decided to explain quickly as he caught sight of the coach striding over in the corner of his eye, "he wasn't cheating. That was a fair play." 

  
The burgundy head whipped up and looked at him sharply before looking back at the growing crowd of soccer players that was gathering. A couple of the kids who had heard Taichi's words were even nodding in agreement. A couple of them were even beginning to snicker. 

  
"It was fair?" Daisuke asked suspiciously. A few more kids broke into laughter as Taichi nodded. 

  
"Now what's going on here?" Taichi looked over to see the soccer counselor moving through the kids to where he and Daisuke were standing. 

  
Without so much as a warning, Daisuke's shoe smacked Taichi in the chest as the little boy threw it before taking off like a bat out of hell. Picking up the shoe that had bounced onto the ground, Taichi ground his teeth. Why that little _brat_. All Taichi had been trying to do was explain the situation, that was no reason for the little twerp to get all bent out of shape and _throw_ things at him. 

  
Ignoring the counselor's yells, Taichi took off after Daisuke. 

***** 

  
How was _he_ supposed to know that that was a fair play!? It didn't _look_ fair! Daisuke growled in frustration as he shucked his other shoe off at the cabin door and ran for his bed. All he'd been trying to do was help, but did anyone ever see it that way? Noooo.

  
Burrowing under his covers, Daisuke grabbed at his blue dragon stuffed animal that he'd hidden there the night before. He kept it stashed safely under the covers because he knew the older kids would tease him for it. Older kids were just dumb that way. 

  
He would just hide out here in the cabin until dinner. Everyone would forget what he did by then, right? Dinner was hours away after all, and it wasn't like they had a lot of room for thoughts in those big ugly heads of theirs. The way Daisuke saw it, any moron that chased a ball back and forth for hours on end couldn't be any more intelligent than his sister's hamster. After all, Squeakers ran around in a metal wheel for no apparent reason. There wasn't much difference between the ball of fuzz and the kids at this camp. 

  
"Daisuke! I know you're in here!" 

  
The little boy winced at the bellow from Taichi-san. Okay, okay, so throwing his shoe at Taichi-san had been a little over the top, but still! It had been _embarrassing_. They'd all been _laughing_ at him! Scowling, Daisuke shoved the paw of his stuffed dragon into his belt loop, and then tensed as Taichi-san's footsteps came closer. 

  
"Did you not think I'd find you or what, Daisuke? You're hiding place yesterday was much better." The older boy scoffed, and Daisuke saw Taichi-san's hand pull up at the end of the blanket. 

  
"KYAH!!" The little boy yelled as he flung himself full force at the older boy. They both fell to the floor with a thud, Daisuke landing squarely on top of Taichi-san's chest, knocking the air out of the older boy. 

  
Not wanting to stick around and give Taichi-san the time to regain his breath, the little boy ran as fast as his short legs could take him. He ran past the other cabins, he ran into the woods, and by the time he crossed onto the main hiking trail, he could hear Taichi-san's crashing footsteps behind him. 

  
It was a funny thing about fear, and the knowledge that he was being chased. Daisuke soon found himself running faster than he ever had before in his entire life. He blazed through the end of the trail, and off into the under brush--making his own trail--but that didn't deter the other boy at all. No, Taichi-san was still there behind him, albeit a bit farther behind now. 

  
Just...just what _was_ the older boy going to do if he caught Daisuke? Panicking anew, Daisuke made a feint to the left before taking off towards the right and the sound of running water. The feint didn't seem to faze Taichi-san at all though. Daisuke could practically feel the other boy's breath on his neck. So in a last minute, ditch effort, attempt to shake the older boy, Daisuke scrambled up the first tree he could. 

  
Except, now he could hear Taichi-san climbing up behind him. How was he supposed to get down now?! 

  
"Daisuke! Stop running away and stop climbing! Just sit still." Taichi-san grunted. 

  
"No way!" Daisuke yelled, in a full fledged panic now. "I've seen this movie!" The burgundy haired boy screeched as he inched out farther on the limb he was on. "You're gonna catch me and roast my eyeballs and pull my brains out through my nose and _then_ you're gonna dress me up in girl clothes!" He all but cried. 

  
"What the hell do your parents let you watch?!" Taichi-san responded, bewildered. 

  
"I wasn't s'posed to watch it." Daisuke whimpered as the older boy inched out onto the limb that Daisuke had climbed out on. "Go away!"

  
"C'mon Daisuke, just come over here. It's not like I'm gonna hurt you or anything." The brown haired boy scoffed. Oh right. And Daisuke was supposed to _believe_ that?! Did Tachi-san think he was an idiot?! 

  
"No. Way." The burgundy haired boy returned emphatically. Taichi-san inched farther out on the limb, and Daisuke scooted back some more. 

  
And that was when they heard the sickening crack that branches make right before they snap off. 

  
****** 

  
Taichi heard the branch break seconds before he felt it fall out from underneath him. Vaguely, he heard Daisuke shriek, but his attention was more focused on the rushing water below them. In a couple of seconds that seemed to last for lifetimes, Taichi found himself and the branch splashing hard into the moving currents of the river. 

  
"Help!" At the garbled sound of Daisuke's voice, Taichi looked up just in time to see the burgundy hair bob below the surface a couple of feet from the branch. Great. The brat couldn't swim. Reaching over to where Daisuke's head had gone under, Taichi was relieved to seen it resurface again, if just for a second. 

  
As quick as he could, he snagged the back of Daisuke's shirt and tugged the kid over to the log that he was now using to keep his own head above water. 

  
"There. Hold onto this!" Taichi shouted as he pulled the younger boy half way up onto the log. Latching onto the wood for all he was worth, Daisuke whimpered as Taichi tried to swim towards the shore. 

  
After ten minutes of trying though, the shore wasn't any closer than it had been when they'd first fallen in. The current was just too strong at this point in the river, and Taichi wasn't willing to try swimming to shore with Daisuke's arms around his neck just yet. The kid would choke him for sure. 

  
"I'm gonna die!" The burgundy haired boy finally wailed as Taichi gave up and climbed farther up on the log beside the younger kid. 

  
"We are not going to die. We're just going to ride along until the current calms down a bit, and then I'm going to push this log onto the shore and we're going to hike back." Taichi said confidently. Daisuke blinked at him for a moment. 

  
"We're gonna die!" 

  
"Stop it!" Taichi snapped, losing what little patience he'd had for a moment. "I've gotten other kids through worse situations than this." Of course, at the time, Agumon had been there to help him, but still. They were just floating down a river.

  
"What could _possibly_ be worse than this?!" The little boy demanded before sniffling. "This is much worse than the time I used Jun's lipstick to paint the mirror and she tried to throw me off the balcony. Or the time when I played with the stick shift when my parents were driving on the highway and that tranmish-thingy fell out of the car and broke. And it's worse than the time Kenji dared me to throw a rock at the classroom window and it broke and my parents threatened to send me to Siberia if I did it again." Daisuke rambled, his voice taking on a slightly hysterical edge. "This is even worse than the time I tried to see if the carpet was fire proof."

  
"Ah. You did that too, huh?" Taichi broke in, interrupting the panicked rant. The little boy turned at him a blinked. "I did that when I was about your age. And my father said if I ever, ever tried anything like that again, he was going to make me sleep out on the street in the dumpster behind the apartment building with the rats." Taichi added as he climbed off the log and began swimming for shore. The current had calmed a bit midway through Daisuke's confession session. "And then he grounded me for a month." 

  
"I did it last year and my mom didn't let me watch any TV or play any video games for a whole two months." The log bumped up against the shore and both boys scrambled up onto dry land. Taichi looked at the sodden, shoeless Daisuke and then back down the river. It was going to be a long hike back to camp. They must have floated at least six or seven miles. 

  
Well, things could be a lot worse, Taichi decided as he stood up and looked down at the burgundy haired boy. He could be stuck here with TK instead, right? God only knew that kid would have wailed something fierce-and he had a few times when they'd been in the digital world-and Kari would have been whining and blaming him for the whole thing by now. Of course, they were both a little bit better about these type of situations after what they'd gone through last summer, but still, Daisuke had held up pretty good. 

  
"We better get going. It's gonna be a _long_ walk." 

  
*****

  
"Taichi-san?" Daisuke asked as he rested his elbows on the older boy's fluffy brown hair. "Do you think we'll get to camp before the sun sets?"

  
"God, I hope so. You weigh a ton." 

  
Daisuke grinned slightly in the dusky light of the setting sun. He'd made it about a mile before Taichi-san had noticed that the younger boy was limping something fierce. Further inspection had revealed blood stained socks from where Daisuke had tripped, scrapped, and generally made a wreck of his stockinged feet. 

  
Daisuke sighed happily from his position on Taichi-san's shoulders. "That's what my dad always says when we're at parades. He says I must eat iron or something. But I tried that, and it doesn't taste very good." 

  
"Well, I think we're going to have to take a break." Taichi-san said as he bent down, letting Daisuke get off. The little boy winced a little bit as he put pressure down on his tender feet, but at least they didn't hurt as much now as they had earlier when he'd been walking on them. Plopping down on his butt, Daisuke peeled back his socks to get a closer look at the bottoms of his feet while Taichi scrambled around picking up sticks beside him and clearing a space out in the dirt. 

  
Sometimes, he just really didn't _get _older kids. They did the weirdest things. 

  
The soles of his feet were just a little bit dirty, but there were a couple of scratches that ran up and down them. There was one on his right foot in the arch that was particularly sore and angry looking. Daisuke poked at it gently. That was the one that hurt the most when he walked. 

  
"Well, it looks like we're going to camp here for the night." Taichi-san sat down beside the little boy as Daisuke gave him an utterly horrified look. 

  
"B...But, but we _have_ to get back to camp." Daisuke sputtered as Taichi-san arranged his sticks and pulled a...a _lighter_ out of his pocket. Daisuke's mother would have absolutely tanned his hide if he'd even _thought_ of carrying around a lighter. 

  
"The sun's going down, it's late, and we probably have about another three miles to walk to just get back to the tree that we fell off of." Taichi-san responded calmly as he lit one of the smaller twigs. Daisuke's eyes got big. 

  
"You have a _lighter_."

  
"Last summer...Let's just say that I learned the value of being prepared. Making a fire by rubbing sticks together is_ not_ as easy as it looks." The older boy leaned back and watched as the rest of the branches slowly caught fire before pulling off the extra, army green button-up shirt he was wearing on top of a blue long sleeve tee. "Why don't you lie down on that and try to get some sleep." 

  
Daisuke stared at the shirt and then back up at Taichi-san, and then felt back at the empty belt loop that he'd known about for a while now. "I wanna go home," and on that pitiful whimper, the burgundy haired boy promptly burst into tears. 

  
***** 

  
Daisuke's sobs finally started to subside about fifteen minutes later, much to Taichi's great and utter relief. He never knew what to do when people cried. 

  
"I...I want my b..blue dragon." Daisuke breathed out softly as he gave a shuddering sniff.

  
"Sorry pal, it's already gone down the river, I think." The look of desolation on Daisuke's face was enough to let Taichi know that _those_ hadn't been the right words to say. "I'll get you a new one." Taichi rashly promised. 

  
"You will?" Daisuke sniffled. The older boy nodded enthusiastically. _Anything_ to get the burgundy haired boy to quit crying. "Okay." Spreading out the shirt on the ground, Daisuke curled up into a tiny ball on it as Taichi leaned back against a tree. Hadn't he said that camp this year was in danger of becoming incredibly boring? What in the hell had he been thinking to jinx himself like that?! 

  
"Get some sleep, okay." Taichi finally said as he ruffled Daisuke's wild hair. 

  
"What'd ya do last summer, Taichi-san?" 

  
"Saved the world." The words popped out of his mouth before he could stop them, and he cringed. He and the other Chosen had made a pact to keep what had happened last summer to themselves as much as possible. Their parents, wanting to put it all behind them, had been in whole-hearted agreement. 

  
"Really?!" was Daisuke's now excited reply. "Did ya fight all the baddies that had us at the convention center?" 

  
"You were there?" Taichi blurted out, startled, as Daisuke nodded enthusiastically. 

  
"Yeah, the baddies pulled us out of our home and made me and my parents and my yucky sister go to the conventions center with everyone else." 

  
"Digimon." Taichi corrected with a sigh. What could it hurt anyway to tell the younger boy the truth about it all. It wasn't like anyone was going to take the word of a seven-year-old very seriously anyway. And chances were Daisuke probably wouldn't believe it was true. 

  
"Digimon?" Daisuke prompted, almost as if on cue. 

  
"Last summer, my parents didn't send me to soccer camp, instead they kinda sent me to a general camp. But while I was there it started snowing. Me and a couple of my friends went out to investigate it, and ended up being sucked into another world. The digital world. We met all these weird creatures that called themselves Digimon and claimed to be our partners." Taichi looked over at the younger boy to see that he had Daisuke's full and undivided attention.

  
Warming up to the story, Taichi highlighted some of the more exciting and thrilling parts of his adventure last summer, while leaving out the mind blowingly terrifying moments that he often tried his damnedest to forget. The memory of Devimon flinging beds hundreds of feet off the ground hapazardly in different directions still gave Taichi the chills to think about. 

  
Finally after what seemed like hours of talking and storytelling, the little boy's eyes began to droop. "Well, time for sleep. See ya in the morning, Daisuke." Taichi leaned back on the tree and closed his eyes. 

  
"Taichi-san?" 

  
"Yeah?"

  
"Are ya mad at me for throwin' my shoe at you?"

  
"Nah."

  
"Taichi-san?"

  
"Yeah?"

  
"You don't think I'm just a baby, do you?" 

  
"No." 

  
"Taichi-san?"

  
"What?!"

  
"Would you teach me the rules of soccer?"

  
"Sure. Anything. Now go to sleep." 

  
*****

  
"How soon til we get there, Taichi-san?" Daisuke whined as he idly thumped his feet against Taichi-san's chest. "I'm hungry." They hadn't eaten anything last night, there had been no breakfast in the morning, and the sun was already getting pretty high up in the sky, so the little boy guessed that it had to be close to lunchtime. 

  
"We're almost there, just another mile I think, and quit kicking me." Daisuke leaned his elbows down on Taichi-san's fluffy brown hair and sighed. The older boy had been cranky all morning, and Daisuke was bored. It had been more fun when he was walking earlier, but that had only lasted until he'd started limping again. 

  
"D'ya think they'll be mad at us when we get back?" The burgundy haired boy asked, already knowing the answer, but bored enough to ask anyway. 

  
"Nah, probably not. They'll probably just be glad to have us back, and it's not like it was really our fault or anything." Daisuke quirked an eyebrow and looked down at the brown hair in amusement. Someone was seriously in denial.

  
"Taichi-san, I'm bored." 

  
"Great, I'll let you off and _you_ can carry _me_ the rest of the way."

  
"Can I play with your lighter?"

  
"Not on your life." 

  
"Ah man." Daisuke frowned in disappointment. "D'ya have anything _else_ I can play with?"

  
"Can't you just sit up there and be still?" 

  
"No." 

  
"Fine." The older boy finally said in exasperation as he dropped a hand from Daisuke's knee and dug around in his pocket. "Here." Daisuke took the small telescope from Taichi-san's hand and grinned. 

  
"Cool!" Experimenting with it a bit, Daisuke scanned the surrounding forest and then straight ahead. Was that the camp up ahead? Daisuke thought it might be, but it was too far away to tell for sure. The wind sure was being noisy though. Daisuke could hear it howling in the distance. 

  
"See anything interesting?" 

  
"I think I might see camp.' Daisuke answered as he focused the telescope to a higher magnification. "Hey! I can see my Aunt!" 

  
"What's she doing?"

  
"Jumping up and down and screaming I think. I guess that wasn't the wind I heard."

  
"Does she look mad?" 

  
"Yeah."

  
"We're in trouble."

  
"Well, duh." Daisuke retorted happily as his Aunt and half the camp came racing towards them down the path. It was good to be back. Even better, Taichi-san had promised to teach the younger boy how to play soccer. 

  
***** 

  
"Okay, you know the plan, right, Daisuke?" Taichi asked as he and the rest of the team huddled around the small burgundy haired boy. Solemnly, Daisuke nodded before grinning broadly. 

  
They'd made it back to camp last week in one piece, surprisingly. Of course from the chewing out that the counselors and Daisuke's aunt had given them, the homecoming hadn't been quite what Taichi had been expecting. Apparently, when someone got in trouble with Daisuke, the trouble was compounded in more ways than one. 

  
As it was, this was the first time since they'd walked into camp that Taichi had been allowed to play soccer again. And as a result, he'd dragged the little troublemaker into the fray with him. Apparently, punishment at soccer camp involved not playing soccer and since he could only read his manga so many times, he'd spent a lot of time talking to his cell mate. After having to explain over and over and over again the rules, regulations, and tricks of soccer to the seven-year-old, there was no way Taichi was going to waste the effort by not letting Daisuke get a chance to play.

  
"All right! Let's get to it!" Everyone took their positions, the whistle blew, the ball went into play, and bodies went every which direction. Shuuji-kun, who was once again playing for the other team, had control of the ball, and was flying down the field passing it back and forth with one of his teammates until he came close enough to the goal. He drew back to make his shot, and...

  
Daisuke slid into the boy from the side, knocking the ball out of the way and tripping a now startled Shuuji-kun in the process. Five minutes later, Taichi's team had scored and the game they'd been playing drew to a close. 

  
"Nice job, Daisuke." The brown haired boy felt compelled to tell the younger boy as he went over and ruffled the burgundy hair. The tan face tilted up and grinned proudly back up at him. 

  
"You still owe me a blue dragon, Taichi-san." 

  
  



End file.
